Friday, October 25, 2013

Free the OGREs!

I am sad that I missed the OGRE 6e kickstarter, but SJG has been so kind as to release the rulebook and everything else except for the counters and maps to the internets. Mighty nice of them to finally give me a chance to read the rules, which I found interesting. Coming from the Domains at War and Stargrunt tradition, the thing that struck me as I was reading was "Where are the morale rules?" Which, naturally, would be a poor fit for the sort of 'humanity's last stand against their own best weapon' engagements that the game models. Other than that, though, the rules seem pretty reasonable; ranges in particular are plausible given the 1.5km hexes (one of the things that grinds my gears about BattleTech). I also like how tread damage is handled as gradual attrition and a cost for ramming. Could use some air support rules too. The rulebook gives enough detail of the OGRE map for me to probably set it up on my hex mat, so that might be a fun solo game this weekend... I'll probably also pick up the pocket edition when it comes out, because for that price, why the heck not.

It might be fun to write a program to run the OGRE while I play humans...